UCD News

Nuacht UCD

The Irish non-for-profit movement promoting free IT coding clubs for young people, CoderDojo has reached University College Dublin.

The UCD Dojo was attended by children as young as five and six, who came with their parents to start to learn how to code, develop websites, apps, programs, games and more.

Hosted by the UCD Innovation Academy, CoderDojoUCD was set up and organised entirely by volunteers – one of the ‘codes’ of the CoderDojo movement.

From humble beginnings in a classroom in the Presentation Brothers College (PBC) School in Cork, CoderDojo now has Dojos in the United States, Slovenia, Russia and Japan.

It was founded by James Whelton who at 17 was the first person to crack the iPodNano. He set up a computer club in his own school in 2011 and shortly after finishing his Leaving Certificate he teamed up with entrepreneur and philanthropist, Bill Liao.